Pandora's Box
by Eurothrashed
Summary: In her blurred haste, she had unlocked things never meant to be touched let loose blood and old death all twisted up in the primitive adoration and need to please a Hell God. COMPLETE


Title: Pandora's Box

Author: Eurothrashed

Feedback: Yes, please. E-mail in bio.

Disclaimer: so not mine...

Rating: dunno, don't do ratings... R?

Summary: In her blurred haste, she had unlocked things never meant to be touched; let loose blood and old death all twisted up in the primitive adoration and need to please a Hell God...

Spoilers: Buffyverse, whatever. Last ep of season 6...

A/N I shared an idea for a fic with Wednesday. A and she wanted me to write it. I decided that I'd give it a shot.

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It's over. All of it. Dawn drops to the ground, her eyes sliding shut in relief. Her body aches and her hands are raw from where she held the sword too tight and swung the heavy blade too hard. Survival instinct, that's all her strength was. No Slayer powers or some musty spell found in a book. No, it was brought out by the sheer will to live; truthfully, she's kinda disappointed. She can't even lift the sword now; not that she wants to. She hates that Buffy's able to walk around, able to lean against one of the headstones, able to keep her eyes open to stare at the marble that's usually only seen at night. 

Usually the stones all around them are gray, foreboding somehow. Now, it's tinted lightly in gold glitter from the still shining sun. Dawn only saw the sight for a brief moment before she let herself lay down, shutting her eyes and limply laying her hands on her stomach.

The grass isn't sweet, and the only things she can smell are the remaining aromas of her fear - clinging with sweat against her skin - and the oh-so-familiar scent of grave dirt. Everything smells like gave dirt now, and she tastes it on the roof of her mouth. She wants scalding water, soap, and something to purge the dirt that she feels, not on her skin, but under it. She feels... dirty.

A shiver works up Dawn's spine, making her teeth chatter slightly before she harshly clenches them tight, silencing the annoying noise. She hasn't allowed herself to think about it; to even acknowledge the fact that it happened - let alone the fact that it _could_ happen. It had never even crossed her mind; and why should it? It never happened before... but now it had.  
  
The impossible became possible, as it always does in Sunnydale.

Buffy had been too late.

She burst in at the wrong time and she couldn't save her baby sister. There would be no sudden change in the leading role, not like last time. She didn't even know that Dawn had needed saving; she didn't know that something bad had happened just a few moments before her well-meaning, hero-y entrance.

She didn't know.

And Dawn wasn't sharing.

She can feel everything now. The grass and dirt under her, the warm sunshine on her face... she hates it. Hates it as much as everything she's learned about her _'friends'_ over these last few days. She hates the nice normal things that greeted her after Buffy got them out into the light - like she should hate Spike, like she should hate Willow; like she should hate this stupid ball of dirt that they have to protect from a massively big-evil at least_ once_ every stupid year. But if she hates them, she has to hate herself, and Dawn's too tired to delve into much self-loathing.

Bad things happen to good people. Her friend got a bullet through her chest, her other friend tried to blink her out of existence, and her... well, what was he now? Had the ever been friends? Taking in a deep breath, Dawn lets the ache in her jaw join the throb of her tired body. Well, she doesn't know what they were in reality, but in her head...

As hard as she tries to be shocked, Dawn just can't manage to waste the energy. Love, in love - can her life get anymore screwed? Easy answer, yes, it can. Spike, the asshole who she had been hopelessly in love with since she was eleven, tried to rape her sister. Well, childhood dreams always had to be crushed at some point, 'cause the real world and playing pretend just didn't coexist very well. She had tried to balance it out, grow up but still be able to play the little girl, and she had been happy playing it like that... most of the time. But the little girl was dead; she died the minute Willow tried to make the pain go away. It hadn't been a gory death, just a quick fade-away.

Dawn's lips work themselves into a perverse smile and she hugs herself. Her cold fingers tap out a rhythm against her sides. Each slight movement representing something poignant and deep thinking that would probably end up telling her what the meaning of life is. All the answers are right there, buzzing around inside her skull... if only she could muster up the energy to listen.

Everything is different now; she can't lie and say it isn't, 'cause what's the point in lying anymore? The truth is what matters. What's really real is what matters. And Dawn's neither. She's just a collection of lies and she's never really been real, except for three months in a summer that feels like it happened a million lifetimes ago. She had felt real then, even if it was a sad and desperate kind of real. Now, she just feels empty, paper-thin without the comforting stain of ink to tell her story. Yeah, she can picture it, she just a book, plain looking, with a hundred-odd blank pages silently waiting for an absentee author that will never pick up a pen.

Dawn suddenly feels the need to write. She hasn't felt like writing since that night she found out what she really was; but she can feel that familiar uneasiness that used to wash over her when she needed to find her journal. What had Xander said once? That her journal was her drug? That she got the shakes from not writing? Buffy had playfully smacked him. _But maybe,_ Dawn thinks,_ Maybe he wasn't so wrong, after all._ That old feeling makes her stomach turn, especially when the words and sentences of what she wants to write, form in her mind.

As she lies there, she idly wonders if Willow knows what she did when she told Dawn to think loud. Will had rutted through her head, opening things and lazily leaving their lids on the counter. In her blurred haste, she had unlocked things never meant to be touched; let loose blood and old death all twisted up in the primitive adoration and need to please a Hell God. It makes Dawn laugh a little, and for a few moments, she tries to figure out if it's poetic justice or just really screwed irony.

She had always wanted be noticed appreciated for being able to put her not-so-supernatural skills to use; but now she can remember a time when she had been appreciated. She remembers being more powerful than Buffy could ever dream of being. Dawn had had a job, a freaky destiny if you will, and she had done it better than anyone else.

Now, this's where the poetic justice or screwed irony falls into place, 'cause all of her skills, all her power, hadn't really been hers to command. She had just carried out orders in the purely innocent daze of pleasing her master, of being fawned over and told that she had accomplished whatever it was that she was sent out to accomplish. Not that she had been a _'she'_, or even had words tossed her way; but Glory had been happy, and that had been enough.

Oddly, Dawn's sick smile softens and takes on a dreamy quality. She hadn't always been the Slayer's tag-along sister; she hadn't always been a stupid little nobody... 'cause she remembers now.

She remembers, and she likes the fact that she had been important.

Buffy helps her to her feet and they slowly start the trek home. _See,_ she tells herself, thinking of a night that had changed her life, just like every day after. Startling blonde hair and too-blue eyes flit through her mind's landscape. _I told you I was badder than you._

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END


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